Predictions and Observations:
School Ghoul Duels

A brief summary: Jaden, Jesse, Axel, Adrian, and Jim set out to reach the infirmary, and send Alexis and Hassleberry to the gym with the rest of the supplies they got from the sub. Axel devises some clever tricks, getting Winged Kuriboh to distract the zombies and leading them through passageways beneath the floor and above the ceiling that he discovered perusing the schematics (apparently available on the internet). When the zombies do manage to find them, first Adrian, then Jim, then Axel split off to distract, duel, or lead them away. Jesse and Jaden finally reach the infirmary, but not before the zombies have gotten to Ms. Fontaine. A duel ensues, and Jaden distracts Fontaine while Jesse tries to treat Blair with the medicine they brought, and also protects her from the effects of the duel, which shakes the room and almost brings the ceiling down, and at one point sets it on fire. Jaden wins by a nose, and the ensuing explosion collapses the room. Jaden, Jesse, and Blair get flung out into the hallway, and Fontaine and zombie friends somehow survive the wreck but can’t pursue fast enough. Jaden, Jesse, Blair, Axel, Adrian, Jim, Alexis, and Hassleberry all make it to the gym safely. Blair is beginning to recover, and is sleeping peacefully. And by the way, Adrian’s still playing for the eyeball and we still don’t know how they’re doing over at the other stronghold, the Chancellor’s office. The school has been overrun.

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So Winged Kuriboh can still go through walls, even though it’s corporeal now? Cool. How, though? I hypothesize that, similar to how the Ojamas still manage to float (even though they said they were getting used to gravity), not all of the laws of physics apply to monster spirits, even though they’re visible to people other than their respective duelists. Maybe that’s the only difference. No, we know they’re solid, because of those nasty scratches Adrian got from the Harpie. Maybe they can choose to ignore the laws of physics if they want to; it is, after all, *their* dimension. And if they’re powerful enough to get to humans’ dimension but humans aren’t powerful enough to do the same, that makes them powerful enough to possibly manipulate the laws of physics.
The other question: Why would it have been able to lead the zombies away if they couldn’t duel it? Was it just because it was something that wasn’t a zombie? Was it because they knew Winged Kuriboh could lead them to Jaden? That’s somewhat possible, though that argues more functioning brain cells than the zombies likely have at the moment. I think, more likely, the zombies are attracted to duel energy, because it’s what they seek to take and what they feed off of. Therefore, Kuriboh, as a being of pure duel energy, would be a somewhat attractive lure.

Leave it to Axel to find Duel Academy’s schematics online and study them.

By the way, I’d like to take a moment to give special props to Jesse and Axel. Those two really kicked butt this week. All four of these transfer students—they showed up just in time, because what on Earth (or rather, not) would Jaden and pals do without ‘em? Even Adrian has his moments.

I had been wondering about Adrian, especially after, though I didn’t mention it, he complemented Jaden on how he dealt with the situation and got them out of the sinking sub. Apparently he’s still on Team Eyeball, but I keep hoping that he’ll get a clue one of these weeks.

(Jaden) “Good luck.” (Jim) “Don’t need it!” (Eyeball/Marcel) “But luck is all any of you have.” Luck is an issue that’s frequently debated. This would be a good quote to add to my list of quotes about luck (when I make one), right along with “Luck is a loser’s excuse!” (Alexis, Hearts are Wild), “Oh, I’m sure it was just a lucky move, Kaiba. But you know what they say—it’s better to be lucky than good!” (Pegasus, Champion vs. Creator I, paraphrased), all of the times Joey’s opponents have taunted him for relying on luck (“but it took skill to play the right card at the right time!”), “Lucky? No, I just happen to have a soft spot for old ladies.” (Jaden, Making the Grade), and a million others.

Wow…it’s so obvious, yet it never occurred to me, that in the day and age we see in GX, there would be such thing as a card-recognizer drive on a computer. We already know that they have a signature that can be read by a duel disk, so it naturally follows that with dueling such a huge part of life they’d have computer drives that do the same thing.

By the way, they have power out here in the dusty dimension to run the computer, the lights, and the doors? How? Well, I’d say that since they’re an island far out to sea they’d probably generate most of their own power via the power station at which Jaden dueled the spirit of Jinzo (A Spirit Summoned). But that didn’t get transported to this dimension…did it? Maybe the main building adds to that with solar panels or something? And in this dimension, solar panels are all they need.

So the bad magicky stuff that the eyeball put on the cards is visible? Either that, or Fontaine has special powers and can see it?

Fontaine isn’t wearing a bio-band, is she? She isn’t a student, she’s faculty. Then how did they zombiefy Fontaine? Did they just wear her down the old-fashioned way? Even without draining, duels can take a lot out of you after a while. Or maybe Fontaine lost, which is an automatic drain?

I had been thinking that they’d need to unzombiefy Fontaine to treat Blair, because she knows *how* to use the medicine. How did Jesse know what to do?

Fontaine’s surprisingly verbal for a zombie. Maybe it depends on the zombie; if they usually have a better vocabulary and so forth, they speak better as a zombie.

Is it just me, or are the duels getting more real? I mean, if every duel over the past couple episodes had been like that, Jaden and company would have come back from the sub to find a smoldering pile of rubble where Duel Academy used to be.

Fontaine only gets 2000 lifepoints too. Interesting. I’d say, maybe, that the eyeball’s minions all only get 2000 because they’re playing for the eyeball and therefore the full 4000 would mean that the eyeball itself “loses” entirely. With only 2000, maybe, the eyeball can replace it with energy once the duel’s over, but if a duel took the full 4000, it couldn’t replace it because it will have already “lost.” I’m trying to put this in an intelligible way: in this world, duels level the playing field, in the grand tradition of magic-related duels. Therefore, every duelist gets 4000 lifepoints per duel, period, end-of-story. Since the eyeball is the one that’s actually dueling, it falls to reason that if Fontaine’s lifepoints had been 4000 and had gone to 0, the eyeball would have been the one who lost. In this dimension, losing has nasty consequences, apparently. Therefore, the eyeball doesn’t want to take that chance. It only gives its minions 2000 lifepoints each, so that when they lose it has only lost 2000 of *its* lifepoints, and so it hasn’t lost. Maybe the energy in the tank replaces the lifepoints, whatever. But what I’m saying is that if the eyeball loses all 4000 of its lifepoints it loses, so it doesn’t put all of its eggs on one basket like that.

“Time to pull the plug on this duel”, someone said in this episode. There’s only one other time that particular phrase was used, that I can recall; why on earth would they use it again *now* of all times? (Joey)“Hey, ref! Pull the plug on this duel!” (Roland)“That’s in violation of Battle City regulations!” (Joey) “Then I’m doin’ it for ya!” (Mind Game III)

The zombies survived the roof collapsing. On the one hand, I’m glad that no one at duel Academy got hurt, even if they’re not in their right minds. On the other, this probably means that punching ‘em out for a little while, like I had mentioned before, wouldn’t faze them at all. They just survived a roof collapsing on them, and moreover with no injuries. Therefore, they’re much harder to injure than humans are and punching ‘em wouldn’t do any good.

Right when Fontaine and the zombies got up from being crushed when the infirmary caved in—that was *Camula’s* theme! What gives?

Blair’s condition was somewhat unique. How do they figure, that the medicines might help the other zombies?

“Not if *it* has anything to say about it.” It seems to me that Adrian isn’t really *doing* anything for the eyeball, hasn’t been asked to do anything except spy on Jaden. It would be easy for Adrian to switch sides without retribution. Therefore, I submit that since Adrian’s opinions are subtly geared in favor of the eyeball, it’s got some sort of subtle form of mind control going.

“We’ll take ‘em all on, one at a time” is a quote that was repeated, so it bears notice. First Jesse said it about the zombies, then Chazz said it about the non-zombies.

Kuriboh senses it? Or senses the Ojamas? How? Why?

“Who’s *not* out there? The whole *school’s* slowly turning against us!” A nice cliffhanger, and a line that should probably be remembered.

So, what next? My best guess is that they still have to get the food that Chazz had been guarding, and go through a school full of zombies to do it.

So, how’re things over at the other stronghold, the Chancellor’s office? For it to even *be* one, apparently either Crowler and Bonaparte are finally starting to step up (about time) or a student with some sense ducked in for cover and got them to get a clue. The student notebooks (by the way, that’s what they’re called now—it’s canon as of Sub-Desert Duel! Yessss! I know what to call them!) don’t seem to be working very well, so the gym’s probably having some trouble staying in touch with them. Why, though? The rest of the electricity seems to be working fine (I already mentioned that), and if it were a matter of batteries, they would either work or not work, not this staticky mess. Maybe all the evil magic or whathaveyou in the air is interfering with them? But that would mean that they’re also handy as gigometers. And speaking of which, all of the energy-draining going on right now proves that either Shirley and Hassleberry have grown immune to the wacky vibes (which we haven’t heard about since Duel Academy was surrounded by trees instead of sand) or the energy-draining business is not responsible for them. So anyway, back to the technical difficulties with the notebooks. They’d probably need to reprogram them. Axel managed that nifty trick turning them into homing beacons; maybe he could take a crack at it. If they can pull Bastion away from his calculations (assuming he’s still at the chalkboard in the gym, which, why would he go anywhere else?), he might be able to program the notebooks. I’m just speculating for the sake of it really, but still, if they can coordinate with the other part of the school that doesn’t consist of individuals who make Bonz’s monsters look energetic and lively, and find out if they’re still holding their own, it would be nice.

The next episode is Triple Play I. ‘Triple’ in what sense? Like three duels or plans happening at once, three duelists vs. three, or three vs. one even? Groups of three that come to mind are the Ojamas; Jaden, Jesse, and Hassleberry (who make a quartet with Syrus, who’s zombiefied); um, Crowler, Bonaparte, and Dorothy, the three teachers that we’ve seen in this dimension (Don Simon doesn’t count) and aren’t, as far as we know, zombies (and Fontaine, zombiefied, makes four); Jim, Jesse, and Axel, the three transfers who are entirely friendly; Slifer, Obelisk, and Ra dorms; there seem to be a lot of broken quartets that end up having three. That’s kind of an interesting little trend.

That’s all for now, folks! –Clio